Ryan Marcotte Selected for NSF and NDSEG Graduate Research Fellowships

CSE graduate student Ryan Marcotte has been selected for two prestigious graduate fellowships to support his ongoing studies in computer science and engineering. The fellowships are from the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program and the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship from the Department of Defense.

Ryan works with Prof. Edwin Olson in the APRIL Lab, where his research is in the area of multi-agent search algorithms for both known and unexplored environments. These techniques could enable search teams to save critical minutes in finding survivors of a natural disaster, law enforcement to track down suspected criminals in a manhunt, or any number of other applications in which teams of human or robotic agents must search for something or someone that is missing.

Ryan graduated Summa Cum Laude in 2015 from UT Dallas with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering. At UTD, he was a Eugene McDermott Scholar, worked on the UTD Robot Chess Project, and founded RISE, an outreach organization that brings hands-on science and engineering demonstrations to elementary students in the Dallas community.

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The National Science Foundation's Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) helps ensure the vitality of the human resource base of science and engineering in the United States and reinforces its diversity. The program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines who are pursuing research-based master's and doctoral degrees at accredited United States institutions.

The National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship is a highly competitive, portable fellowship that is awarded to U.S. citizens and nationals who intend to pursue a doctoral degree in one of fifteen supported disciplines. NDSEG confers high honors upon its recipients, and allows them to attend whichever U.S. institution they choose.